


Salt

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: e05 Mutiny, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shakespeare Quotations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:31:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: After Wellard's first beating, Archie goes in search of the young midshipman and tries to bring the boy comfort in the only way he can.





	Salt

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Turning Over the Sands of Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10534998) by [bbcphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcphile/pseuds/bbcphile). 



> This oneshot has grown out of my love for Archie and Wellard's friendship in Mutiny and Retribution and I hope that I've done them both justice. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for canon typical violence, memories of past rape and blood.

Salt 

 

After the beating, Archie finds Wellard in the midshipman’s berths, curled up in the shadowed corners of his cot. He had slipped away when Styles had carried the barely conscious boy from Sawyer’s cabin, towards the shadowed privacy of the ward room to stand by the wash basin and tried to master himself.

 

_It’s over._

_It was years ago._

_It’s not._

_You know it’s not._

The small, dark voice that he tries his hardest to forget had begun its’ whispering from the deep crevices of his mind and alone in the ward room, he could not seem to shut it out.

 

He had stood against the washbasin, his arms braced against the chipped porcelain and listened to the slap of the sea beat against the hull.

 

Tried to breathe.

 

Tried to feel each breath deep and ragged through his lungs, focussing on something, anything, that would keep his mind from slipping back towards the old memories that he wishes to forget.

 

Tried to think of Horatio’s smile, of the song of the wind through the rigging, of his sisters whom he had not seen for years and yet as he did so, his thoughts would be broken by the thought of Wellard.

 

_Wellard’s pale, pinched face streaked with silent shards of salt as he slumped against Doctor Clive, unable to keep thinking past the pain._

_Wellard clinging to the rigging, white faced and shaking as the rip of the worn sail cut through the ship like a knife through cloth._

_Matthews’ voice hard in the silence as each number of the full dozen was called, the crack of the rattan slicing through the air._

_The weight of his fingers digging into his palms as he had clenched them behind his back, keeping his gaze firmly on the porthole above Matthews’ head, his expression carefully blank._

_Before the day was out, he would have to steal some vinegar and brown paper from Clive’s supplies._

* * *

 

The shouts from the quarter deck are muffled as he makes his way towards the midshipman’s berths, tucked under the lower gun deck, lulled away by the creak of the wind through the rigging and the slap of the waves against the hull. Horatio and Bush will be somewhere up in the forecastle with Buckland and Sawyer and no one will miss him for the time being.

 

The lantern that he carries throws the midshipman berths into strange shadows, the coils of line and tackle hanging gaunt and salt stained against the creak of sea chests. The extinguished stub of a candle sits on a chest by the foot of Wellard’s hammock, the shadow of his thin body turned towards the porthole and the rolling expanse of the ocean beyond.

 

‘Wellard?’                      

 

He keeps his voice low, remembering the times that Clayton had found him after he had endured such a beating at the hands of the boatswain, the stinging echo of the rattan smarting into a dull, throbbing agony against his buttocks. Remembering the way that the older man had laid his hands gently on Archie’s shoulders, making his presence felt in the silent, steady way that Archie yearns he could still feel.

 

_‘It’s all right, Archie. It’s all right. Breathe deeply now, that’s it. I’m here. Think… Think of your favourite sonnet, or that soliloquy you recounted last night… What was it?’_

_And Archie remembers the ghosts of sobs catching thickly in his throat as Clayton had held him fast, his hands working small, soothing motions against the knots in his shoulders._

 

‘Wellard, it’s Kennedy.’ Slowly, he moves closer, raising the lantern higher, one hand reaching tentatively for the rise of a shoulder under a thin blanket that is coming apart at the seams.

 

A shock of dark hair is just visible from the blanket and inch by inch Wellard slowly shifts to face him, dark eyes wide and red rimmed, his thin face streaked with salt.

 

The younger boy’s breathing is fast and ragged, badly concealed tears catching at every breath as he blinks owlishly, eyes slowly adjusting to the intermittent light.

 

‘Sir?’

 

‘It’s all right, Wellard. I just came to see how you’re bearing up, that’s all.’

 

The younger boy’s body stiffens at that, a look of smarted pride that Kennedy has seen so many times flash through Hornblower’s eyes rising in the depths of his pupils. A small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth at the sight of it and he bites it back, unsure whether the comparison will be welcomed.

 

‘I’m perfectly fine, sir. Thank you.’ The words are stiff and cold of emotion, all their weight lost in the sobs that Archie hears all too clearly behind each one.

 

Above their heads, he hears the groaning protest of the _Renown_ as Matthews heaves her to go about, the creak of the sails snapping against the wind and the strain of bodies against the sheets as she labours round.

 

‘You don’t have to pretend with me, Wellard,’ Archie murmurs. ‘I’ve seen a beating, had them done to me on many an occasion as a midshipman.’

 

He breaks off, remembering how Clayton would find him curled up in his cot, body trembling violently with aftershocks from the beatings that so often had not been his to take, the seat of his frayed breeches sodden with shame, lower lip bitten to ribbons in his attempts not to cry out.

 

Remembering Simpson’s fathomless eyes gloating through the shadows; following, haunting his every move.

 

_The weight of hard hands gripping his shoulders and pinioning his arms behind his back, forcing him back against the wall. The tear of jagged fingernails prising open recently healed scabs, the whorls of a small knothole above his head floating in and out of his line of vision as he tried to focus on something other than the pain that threatened to engulf him._

_Blood pulsing over his lower lip as Simpson had caught his chin and forced it upwards, the other reaching to fumble in the depths of his breeches, giving Archie no choice but to return the manic, glittering gaze._

_‘Jack’s missed you, boy.’_

 

Almost a decade later, it is still the same.

 

The actors have changed, moving on to new parts through the backstage of the intervening years and the main players have grown older, but the play itself; the damnable, damnable crux of the play, whose script he wants so badly to rip to shreds has not.

 

Midshipmen are still beaten, still used as bait for their superior’s pleasures and the officers…

 

He shakes his head roughly at that thought, turning his attention back to Wellard. The ghosts of the past have no business here and yet still they rise, gathering in silent, mocking judgement through the shadows of the berth, no matter how hard he tries to keep them at bay.

 

‘Sir? Aren’t… Aren’t you needed up on deck?’

 

_And pretend that the injustice had never happened?_

_Never._

 

The question is caught around a whimper as the younger boy tries to shift into a more comfortable position, the fresh scars catching against the linen of his shirt.

 

The sound cuts Archie’s heart as Wellard’s eyes begin to fill with too-quick tears, making him wince in sympathy and reach into the breast pocket of his coat for a handkerchief, his fingers beginning to move slowly against the boys’ thin shoulders, hoping that the gesture may bring him some comfort.

 

‘Not until the next bell and they won’t miss me down here. I’ll help you get your breeches off and then I’m going to put some brown paper with vinegar on the cuts.’

 

Wellard raises an eyebrow at this but says nothing as he watches Archie reach into his coat pocket once more and draws out the corked flask of viscous black liquid and an assortment of brown paper strips. 

 

Above their heads, the timbers of the _Renown_ groan and creak as she shifts slowly through the waves, the salt-stained wood contracting under the pressure of the sea.

 

‘Aye, sir,’ Wellard murmurs and Archie begins the slow, tender process of easing the old, soiled breeches off the boy’s thin legs that protrude like poles from over the rim of the hammock.

 

Even under the tan from the West Indies sun, the lad is ghoulishly pale, dark eyes lit from underneath with crescents of deep, bruised purple. When Archie makes to touch him, he flinches, the gesture an obvious one of unconscious pain against past agonies, dark eyes flashing up in alarm to hold Archie’s and back again.

 

‘I’m sorry sir,’ Wellard murmurs, accepting the found handkerchief and blowing his nose sheepishly. ‘I… I didn’t mean…’

 

‘I know you didn’t,’ Archie finds himself replying, heart aching as he kneels in front of the cot to pull the breeches down over Wellard’s ankles and shove them away.

 

 Carefully, he lifts the boys’ legs back up to the canvas and watches as the midshipman shifts onto his stomach, gritting his teeth against the pain.

 

‘Bite your pillow if you can,’ Archie hears himself murmur, reaching for a moment to lay his free hand on Wellard’s shoulder as he tips a measure of vinegar onto the first strip of paper.

 

On the bed, the dark head shifts, the thin body that is all bone and sinew tensing in expectation of the pain. ‘This will sting.’

 

He works quickly and methodically, the silence enclosing them until he can think of nothing but the repetitive action of laying the soaked paper against the boys’ shivering skin.

 

Wellard’s shoulders hunch in silent agony as the acid stings against the cuts and Archie feels his heart go out to him for his stoical silence. The skin under his touch is as smooth as a child’s, littered very occasionally with a well-placed mole or freckle that look to Archie like a beauty spot high up on the back of the lads’ thigh, the livid slashes of Matthews’ rattan slicing across the pale, unblemished canvas in searing, crimson slashes.

 

Finally, he sets the bottle away and  shifts back onto his haunches, reaching into the depths of his jacket pocket for the copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets that a long-ago acquaintance at the Theatre Royal had given to him on a closing night of Hamlet that he had absentmindedly picked up from his cot in the black, befuddled hours of the first dog watch that morning and hadn’t yet returned.

 

Turning over with a wincing grimace, Wellard’s dark eyes light up the sight of the book, a spark that Archie has not seen there previously flickering deep in his pupils.

 

‘Is that…?’

 

The question is tinged with hope and Archie nods, absentmindedly flicking through the books’ thin, water stained pages with the rims of red and blue marbling catching at the corners.

 

‘It is,’ Archie murmurs as he finds his place, the boys’ smile sending a flare of light against the pain of past memories that, at the sight of Wellard, have begun swimming back to the forefront of his mind.

 

The timbers over their heads groan in answer and Wellard moves tentatively closer, eyes wide and hungry for what sustenance the words can give him.

 

As he reads, Archie lets his voice be carried far away from the berth, over the ocean and back to the dimly lit stage of the Theatre Royal, wishing he could do more.

 

But as the cadences from sonnet 15 rise and fall with the rock of the ship and Wellard’s face begins to relax, the older lieutenant cannot help but smile.

 

There will be challenges enough to face later, but the ageless words that sweep up through the shadowed berth and Wellard’s shining, curious eyes tell him that for the time being, it is enough.

 

_‘So should the lines of life repair,_

_Which this, Time’s pencil or my pupil pen,_

_Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,_

_Can make you live your self in eyes of men._

_To give yourself away, keeps yourself still,_

_And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill._

 

* * *

 

 ** _Fin_**  

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms, questions etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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